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Summoning the Power of the Crowd

LAST time, this column ended with an unusual plea to Radio Shack. It was prompted by a publicist in the company’s headquarters who had ceased all communications with the Haggler after corresponding, via e-mail, about an irate customer.

Trying an end-around, the Haggler posted a direct request in the column to Dorvin Lively, the company’s interim C.E.O., asking him to get in touch. To ensure that Mr. Lively got the message, the Haggler included the company’s media relations e-mail address and urged readers to send notes, too.

Well, many did. Exactly how many is unclear, as the Haggler is guessing that the 200 people who copied him in e-mails to Radio Shack is some fraction of the total. Suffice to say, it was a deluge, and it started about three minutes after the column was posted on Saturday night, gained momentum on Sunday and Monday and continued, in tapered-off numbers, for days.

It was an outpouring that gave the Haggler the kind of brief head rush that must be commonplace for megalomaniacs. Fear the Haggler, all ye recalcitrant corporations! For the Haggler Hordes stand ready at their keyboards and, given the signal, they shall unleash a torrent of highly articulate and deeply empathic missives that ye do not want clogging up thine Internet server.

“If I were you, Radio Shack, I’d respond to the Haggler P.D.Q.,” wrote Deborah Lopez, capturing the tone of a typical letter. “In the meantime, I think I’ll keep walking past your store and not stop in. Good luck.”

“If you won’t even respond to The New York Times’s Haggler,” Len Coris asked, “why should I think you would respond to me about a problem or an issue?”

“Bad Radio Shack,” wrote another reader, addressing the company as if it were a wayward Chihuahua. “Bad!”

Needless to say, this pig pile of indignity put Radio Shack in a far chattier mood. A spokeswoman, Kally Masino, wrote the Haggler at 10:08 a.m. on the Sunday that the column was published. Then she wrote again about 20 minutes later. She didn’t actually say “uncle,” but it was sort of implied.

Photo

Credit
Christoph Hitz

First, though, let’s back up and explain why the Haggler contacted Radio Shack in the first place. It started with a letter from Ronnie Hirsh of Manhattan. He had tried to pre-order an iPhone 5 from his local Radio Shack, and was told that he’d have it by Sept. 21 if he bought a $50 gift card. Well, because of a delivery glitch, it didn’t arrive by then. And, it turned out, that gift card was nonrefundable.

“Radio Shack figured out how to make money without actually selling a phone,” he wrote. “In my opinion, sleazy.”

When the Haggler wrote to Radio Shack, an unnamed person in the media relations department replied, saying the pre-order agreement made clear that gift cards were nonrefundable. This unnamed person also noted (as did Mr. Hirsh, in his original letter) that people who complained loudly enough were, in fact, given refunds. Mr. Hirsh, with his returned $50 in hand, bought his iPhone elsewhere.

The Haggler thinks that if a company makes it plain that a fee or service or a fill-in-the-blank is nonrefundable — which was the case here — it’s up to the consumer to read and understand that fact. Given that Radio Shack refunded Mr. Hirsh’s money despite clearly saying it was not obliged to — well, put this one in the win column for Radio Shack.

So, if this matter was resolved, why did the Haggler invite readers to carpet e-mail Radio Shack?

Well, whoever was interacting with the Haggler stopped doing so after he asked about another matter, soon after the gift-card issue was hashed over. A few months ago, the Haggler returned an item to Radio Shack for which he’d paid cash. At the register, a cashier asked for the Haggler’s phone number. Why would you need a phone number, the Haggler asked.

“The system” requires a phone number, the clerk explained.

Ah, the system. The Haggler managed to get his money back without divulging his phone number, but an online search suggested that others haven’t been as lucky. It was when the Haggler asked about this strange policy that Radio Shack went silent.

Fast-forward to that e-mail from Ms. Masino, the P.R. rep. Reached by phone a few days after her Sunday e-mail, she said she’d been the person corresponding with the Haggler. When asked why she had suddenly ceased all communication, she said she didn’t know. The Haggler asked her to take a guess. Well, she might have handed off the Haggler’s message to someone else on the P.R. team, she said, who might have assumed she’d already dealt with the matter. Or not. At one point, she used the word “dumbfounded,” though it’s not clear what she was dumbfounded about.

The conversation dumbfounded the Haggler.

Later, Ms. Masino e-mailed: “It’s become clear that we didn’t handle your questions as well as you should expect from a national retailer. We owe you an apology because one failed response has distracted from a broader discussion about taking care of customers.”

Apology accepted. Now, what’s with this phone-number demand for cash transactions? “We collect name, address and phone contacts for refunds,” she wrote, “even for small cash purchases, because it creates an audit trail that can be used to make certain each refund is delivered to a specific person and is not a fraudulent event.”

This makes sense only once you realize that the fraudulent events that worry Radio Shack, as Ms. Masino confirmed, are those that might be committed by employees, who could hand over cash they should not be handing over. Many retailers have an identical policy, she added. But the Haggler has encountered it only at Radio Shack. Regardless, the company’s suspicions about its staff members don’t seem a compelling reason to force customers to share personal information. Radio Shack needs either a better system or more employees that it trusts.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2012, on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: Summoning the Power of the Crowd. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe